Fallout 4

You can store all your junk materials at a workshop to be broken down to component parts as need be

Pre-War money is considered junk but is still valuable, do NOT do the above unless you're in dire need of its components

You can sort inventory when transferring stuff based on things like weight, value, damage, etc (sorting by value could help with the above)

Headgear bonuses are nullified in power armor, so take the helmet off and put your sunglasses on if you're trying to pass a Charisma check or whatever

Weapon mods you replace go into your inventory, their weight can add up so watch out for that

The critical hit bonus thing you build up in VATS won't miss, so you can use this to hit something super far away and cripple or kill it with ease

You can take mods off of guns you find, but I haven't messed with it yet, you might have to craft the base mod first but maybe that's free, if not it's probably cheaper anyway

You can tag materials you need, so like I tagged copper because I want to wire shit up, so now when I look at a lamp that can be broken down for copper there's a little magnifying glass next to its name

I noticed that my mostly empty fusion core (power armor battery) sold for the same price as a fully charged one, so never let those completely deplete if you can as I suspect an empty is worthless

There's an auto-save setting where you set a timer (default 10 minutes) and after that time is up the next time you look at your Pipboy and back out of the menu it'll save

PC specific: Instead of holding V to enter the build menu you can hold the center mouse button/wheel if you want

The color of your Pip-Boy light is tied to the color you set in the options menu. Try an amber color instead and it won't turn the whole world nuclear green when you turn on your lamp.

All the Junk you dump into your Workstation counts as fair game for crafting components. It's handy in that your Workstation is essentially a recycling bin, but be careful of putting any expensive Junk (like those pre-war moneys) in there.

You will need the associated perk if you want to do better than basic mods in any particular branch. Armorer for armor, Blacksmith for melee, Gun Nut for guns, Science! for energy weapons and energized modifications. I believe they're under Strength and Intelligence.

The Scrapper perk (Intelligence 5) is invaluable for extensive modding. Before taking it, you may as well just sell junk weapons since all you'll get is Steel, Rubber, and Wood, and you can get that by recycling trees and cars and tire piles that are abundant around your neighborhood.

For a lot of mods, Adhesive is your life's blood. You'll find a bit while scavenging, but only enough for a few mods at a time. Consider tagging it for search so you don't miss any. If you're really thirsty for glue, some traders offer a Delivery of Adhesive for a crazy amount of caps after taking the Local Leader perk. If you're rolling in caps, it can be worth it.

Armor mods are not transferable between armor types. Raider mods only go with Raider armor, Leather with Leather, Limbs with Limbs, and so on.

Same with weapon mods. 10mm pistol mods cannot go onto Pipe pistols even if the mods share identical names.

You CAN, however, snatch a good mod off of a gun/armor piece by replacing the mod with its basic one and then turn around and attach the good mod onto your favorite thing (so long as they were compatible). Or, if you lack a compatible thing, you can still hold onto the mod for later.

Legendary and Unique weapons are indeed craftable. They're excellent candidates for those harder-to-craft high level mods you've been saving.

"Outfit" armors (the ones that replace your suit and attached armor pieces) are generally NOT craftable and are generally inferior. You can sell them or hold onto them for fashion, but you can't break them down or build them up. Suits aren't typically craftable either, but come with innate bonuses and are easily swappable without ruining your getup. Your Vault Suit is a notable exception since you can craft it to be powerfully energy and radiation-resistant.

The vegetable paste food you make can be broken down into 5 adhesive. Requires like carrots and another fruit and purified water, but purified water generators automatically fill your workbench with water and vegetables are easy mode.

You can equip any settler in your settlements also in the same way as Dogmeat but as far as I can tell they're invincible? So it's just aesthetics

Farming seems to be the only job that settlers will assign themselves to without you asking. But if you have one settler assigned to a guard post, and you build a new guard post that guard will assign themselves automatically so long as they have a free work slot (I think this is 3 guard posts per settler, or 8 crops per settler)

The standard gun mods seem to only cost basic materials plus screws and not adhesive, so if you see one you like it still might be worth it to craft a default mod so you can swap it out.

A shirt and slacks will give you the same amount of CHA as a suit and weighs 2 less, so that's an extra 20 Tin Cans you can pick up!

When you dismiss a companion you can choose which settlement to send them to, and if you fill their inventory with stuff it's an easy way to move gear to equip settlers with, but again I don't think it's necessary to do that but it is fun

Settlers also seem to have infinite ammo so long as they have at least one bullet of the appropriate type in their inventory

Certain side quests that seem to be randomly generated, like kidnappings can expire if you don't get to them quickly enough

With the super-mutants that are intent on delivering a certain football sized package to your face, shooting the arm they are carrying it in will make them drop their cargo much to the chagrin of their homies

The Local Leader perk (Cha 6) allows you to establish supply lines between settlements and is handy because it lets you access networked workshop stashes for the purposes of building/crafting.

As long as all settlements are connected in some way any settlement enjoys the resources of the whole network. Any given settlement only really needs one supply line if you plan it right.

Assigning a settler to a supply line turns them into a provisioner which travels between settlements yet counts against the population limit of their "home settlement". Provisioners are currently difficult to keep track of and/or reassign.

Accordingly, it is more efficient to have an inward flowing spoke-to-hub mode for supply lines. It is better to have a provisioner based in each settlement linking back to your main home base (either Sanctuary Hills or perhaps
The Castle if you pursue the Minutemen quest line
). Having your main base be populated entirely with provisioners means less security guards and farmers.

Decide on your home base early on for the above reason. A more central location means less wasted time fast traveling (or waiting around after fast traveling) but the passage of time isn't much of a factor in general. Sanctuary Hills is a pretty decent choice given it is spacious and has unmoveable NPCs anyway.

Aiming down your sights near the edge of a wall automatically leans you out to take shots, and you lean back into cover when you go back to free aim. The game never mentions this once.

Wounding prefixes on a weapon are absurdly OP, because bleeding damage is unresistable and stacks per hit. A pipe pistol that did bleed damage, that I picked up in the first few minutes after the prologue, lasted me for most of the game after modded for rapid fire.

When playing the Hacking mini-game, look for brackets of the same type that are facing each other. () {} [] They should highlight when you hover over them, even if there is gibberish in the middle. Clicking on these will remove a dud password, or can refill your number of guesses.